


my haunted heart is uneasy

by MusicalChick13



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fix-It, I'm talking MAJOR spoilers, the Barton family is in this fic but there's a reason clint/laura has a "past" tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 05:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18866221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalChick13/pseuds/MusicalChick13
Summary: Look, given the character tags it should be clear exactly what I'm fixing.





	my haunted heart is uneasy

**Author's Note:**

> It is two days after Tony Stark’s funeral, and the man known as Clint Barton finally mourns.

It is two days after Tony Stark’s funeral, and the man known as Clint Barton finally mourns.

Well, properly, anyway. He’s been in mourning this whole time, but he finally has the time to completely devote himself to grieving the loss of his partner and best friend, rather than sharing his brain with thoughts of Thanos or Tony or saving the universe.

A thought flicks across his brain. _What kind of universe did we save if she’s not in it?_

He spent five years emotionally torturing himself over what happened to his family, trying to avenge them. Attempting to even the scales in some tragic, pathetic way by executing those he deemed unfit to live, because somewhere he got the notion he could play at being greater than he was. He had let himself turn into a truly terrifying person, someone he’d been sure even Natasha couldn’t forgive. God only knows what he’s going to do now.

_How do you avenge someone who gave up their life freely?_

The first emotion to bubble up during this grim reflection is anger. Anger that she had been so calm. Angry that she was so willing to throw her life away.

Angry that she would leave them.

Leave _him_.

He knows she deserves better than that. She deserves to be cried over, to be toasted at a funeral service where everyone told funny stories about missions with her because that’s what she would have wanted.  To have a fucking parade in her honor.

Natasha deserves to be loved in death the way she was in life. Perhaps even more so.

But all he feels is angry.

* * *

 

The sicker part of his mind takes some comfort in the fact that he’s already on the fourth stage of grief. Maybe the anger is a good thing. Maybe it means it will take less time for this to stop hurting.

He’s already gone through disbelief and guilt. (He doesn’t think he’ll ever really get out of “guilt.” Not when he could have saved her. Not when he should have tried harder.)

The fact that he’s skipped denial completely is a testament to how vivid that memory is, how unable-to-forget he’ll always be regarding that soul-destroying image of her flinging herself off the side of a cliff for _him_ , a washed-up vigilante who couldn’t even honor his family properly.

He could never be in denial about that. Not when there was a Natasha-shaped hole everywhere. Her absence hangs in the air like a heavy, humid mist, and Clint doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to breathe normally again.

Sometimes he swears his heart stops beating. It must, considering everything weighing it down.

The stone’s price was a soul for a soul.

But it was never about the souls of the sacrificed.

It was about the fracturing of the souls left behind.

* * *

 

For someone so obsessed with being unselfish, it doesn’t make sense for her to have done what she did.

Because _this_ was always the selfish choice. His friend and partner got to rest and know that she had won. To have the peace of mind that she had saved someone. Be free from the pain of grief that hammers on his brain every moment he’s awake.

Meanwhile, he was stuck here. Alone. Bereft. Guilty. Wherever she was, she didn’t have to feel that.

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever forgive her.

Briefly, he considers hijacking some tech, begging someone for a ship, stealing the last of the Pym Particles to head back to Vormir, all to offer himself up to the skullish stonekeeper in her place.

 _Ah. There’s bargaining, then_.

But he knows she’d only throw herself off that cliff all over again, and he’d just watch her die a second time. Or a third time. However many times it took for him to give up and leave.

 _Which means they’d both be stuck there forever_.

He contemplates finding someone else. Another person to throw over the edge, something to appease whatever force governed the stone, but he can’t bear to lose any more people he loves.

Because that was the trick, wasn’t it. If it had just been “Kill someone” he would have done that already. God knows he’s done enough of it before. He would gladly pluck someone off the street and march them across the universe to murder them if it meant getting Natasha back.

It breaks his heart to think how she saw _herself_ as the worst of them.

* * *

 

She had always been better than the rest of them put together. It’s why she never gave up. It’s why she wasn’t here to begin with.

It’s why it’s not fair, because nothing ever is.

It wasn’t supposed to be her. She had been so preoccupied with repaying a debt that had never existed in the first place.

Sure, he’d saved her life, helped her turn her life around. But what was that in comparison to her friendship? Her trust? The mere possibility of seeing her work or tapping a pencil against her cheek when she was thinking of how specifically to word a piece of correspondence?

Knowing that she was okay had been all the repayment he’d ever needed. If anything, she’d created a debt where there wasn’t before. One neither she nor anyone else would never be able to repay.

Irony really was a bitch.

* * *

 

There’s a copy of her file stored in an old records office. He has no problem slipping past the security and stealing it undetected.

It’s a plain thing, a grainy, unflattering photo pasted on the front of a tacky beige folder. The barest details of her personal history are scrawled in pristine looped cursive, and the three bronze brads in the center are overflowing with a catalog of mission reports, most of which are written in Russian (or other non-English languages).

He studies it before he goes to sleep and immediately after he wakes up. It’s the only piece of her he has left, and _absolutely nothing_ will take that away from him.

It occurs to him that he hasn’t spoken to his family since Tony’s funeral. Almost a week.

So he sits Laura down, tells her what really happened to him during those five years without her. Says that he knows she’ll never understand, that she was always too good for him.

Her response is to love him anyway. To say that she probably would have done the same thing if she woke up one day and their children had vanished. But that he’s still sleeping downstairs because the thought of that is truly frightening and she needs some time to process this side of him.

This, somehow, does not make things better. He doesn’t want her forgiveness; he wants her to hate him.

Or, at least, he wants someone to hate him as much as he hates himself. Because God knows he deserves that.

However, he can take comfort in the fact that, as much as Laura claims to understand, Clint knows she never really will. She does not know what it’s like. To be unmade. Not the way he had.

That will have to be punishment enough.

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Wanda offers to meet for coffee. She claims it’s because she needs the companionship, but he knows that she’s just worried about him.

When she goes up to the barista to place an order, he pulls out Natasha’s file. He carries it everywhere now because he doesn’t know what else to do.

There had been no body. No assembly of friends seeing her off during her last moments. No peaceful passing in her sleep or glorious death in battle. She died cold, desperate, and alone (save him). How is he supposed to remember her? How is he supposed to cope with his sorrow unless he carries a scrap of her around with him?

Because if he kept her with him, then maybe she wasn’t truly gone. Carting around her file meant she could be memorialized the way she deserved.

Well, not quite the way she had deserved. She deserved the whole universe, but wasn’t ever on the table as something he could have realistically given her (although he would if he could-in a heartbeat, without question).

Besides, he knows she wouldn’t have accepted.

He is brought out of his thoughts by Wanda returning much earlier than he had expected with their drinks.

He makes a half-hearted attempt to stash the file back in his bag, but, in true Clint fashion, he fails.

Wanda’s face falls, her face a mix of compassion, dejection, and concern, with a knowing look in her eye that makes Clint want to slam money down on the table to pay for his coffee and run out the door immediately.

 _There was only one person who got to look at him with that shrewd of a gaze, and she was dead_.

“Steve did that too. With Peggy."

“Sorry?”

“He was always looking at that photo of her. He tried to hide it, but he’s terrible at lying.” She allows a fraction of a smile to creep onto her face. Probably because she’s smart enough to realize that fond memories are a more constructive way of grieving than wallowing in your own misery.

“I just…I just miss her.”

“I know. I do too.”

“Steve and Peggy, though, that’s…that’s different.”

“Is it?”

“They were in love.”

The expression on her face seems to say “Yes, and what’s your point?” except…a bit more politely.

_Surely she doesn’t mean…_

“I did that, too. With Vision.

“I have a picture of the two of us. After our first date. When I’m at home, I never put it down. Just…keep looking at it. Thought that maybe I could still hold onto him if I did that.”

“Again, not the same.”

“Yes it is.”

_It looks like she does mean._

“Natasha was…she was my partner. And my friend.”

And Wanda places a hand gently on his arm, a stark contrast to the panicked, ferocious young girl he met four years ago.

“She was always more than that.”

* * *

 

Those six words batter around in his head that evening.

Of course Natasha was more. He’d always known that.

But…that’s not what Wanda had meant.

And suddenly it hits him. Why this particular pattern of catatonic mourning looked so familiar.

Because, well, yes. He supposed he had always been rather in love with her. And it was incredibly stupid of him not to realize until literally right now.

This, of course, complicates things. Under other circumstances, he’d balk at the idea of trying to find some sort of solution, but he supposes there’s nothing to worry about anymore. She’s gone, so there’s nothing to figure out in the first place. It will be a quiet secret he takes to his grave while he cares for his family, for the wife he also loves.

The wife who will never truly understand him.

But that’s not fair. It’s not her fault she’s a good person.

He sees the way she looks at him now, though. As if he’s a wild animal, liable to sink his teeth into her neck at any moment. Like he’ll eat his own young if pushed too far.

She is frightened of him, disgusted by what he has done, even if she has too much decency to tell him that. Even if she has wordlessly resolved to put the cohesiveness of their family above her own feelings of fear.

He had never deserved her. And he knows the right thing to do would be to leave. To finally give her the space to feel safe. But he has always been too much of a coward to let go.

* * *

 

It is a week later when Lila asks where “Aunt Nat” is. Clint doesn’t have an answer. He calmly tells her to go to her room, that he’ll explain later, that daddy’s tired and sick and needs to be alone.

Laura takes their daughter to her room, but he finds himself denied the mercy of solitude because she returns back downstairs almost immediately.

“You know, you never talked about what happened. Only that she was gone.”

“There’s nothing I can say.”

“Every single conversation was about Tony until two days after his funeral. Even after that whole Loki thing with your mind all those years ago you opened up to me. I know we’re not in the best place right now, but I think talking about it would help.”

“Laura, I…I can’t. There is no way anything could make this better.”

She brings a hand up to his cheek, the very picture of tenderness. “You can’t carry this all by yourself, Clint.”

“Sure I can. She did. But then again, she was always stronger than I was.” The noise that comes out of his mouth is a cross somewhere between a bark and a bitter laugh.

Laura sighs, retreats her hand, casts her eyes downward. “I’ll be in my room if you need anything.”

_My room. Not our room._

At a loss (because he’s always at a loss these days), he pulls her file out again. He’s looked at this damned thing so many times he’s memorized every word of the mission reports. Can spout off her biography forwards, backwards, and sideways. Could probably perfectly sketch the photo on the front from memory despite never having done anything resembling visual art a day in his life.

Suddenly, his cheeks are wet and his nose is running, and he feels the telltale prick of heat that comes with deep sadness. He curls into a ball, sobbing quietly, as everything in the room spins out of focus and there is only him and his bubble of grief.

He wonders if this is what Hell is like.

* * *

 

Depression, desperation, irritability, it doesn’t matter what he calls the feeling that engulfs him, he’ll still have to feel it.

It is day fifty-three without Natasha. And he knows he shouldn’t keep count, knows he shouldn’t stare at the slant of her Russian characters for hours on end, knows he shouldn’t replay every interaction between them he can remember, knows he _should_ excise the sound of her laughter as they sped through space making jokes about Budapest, not knowing it would be the last time they would ever do so.

He knows he shouldn’t do most of what he’s done in his life. But here he is anyway.

It’s getting to the point where he can barely look at his own family anymore. They remind him of normalcy, something he doesn’t deserve and doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to feel again.

So he leaves in the middle of the night, dropping a note on the kitchen sink explaining what’s going on, that he needs time by himself to deal with what’s happening, that he’s too broken to be the husband or father they need right now.

This is, indeed, the coward’s way out, but Natasha had always been the brave one.

He thinks that maybe he’s turned into a worse person than he did the first time he lost people he loved because of the Infinity Stones.

At least then he had only hurt people who deserved it. Now he’s abandoning the very thing he was so hell-bent on avenging.

Clint Barton has gone by many names and been many people, but he thinks the current version of himself is his least favorite.

If he can even call what he is now any kind of version of himself. More like a copy. An echo. A cavity in the place where a person once was.

He doesn’t know who he is anymore. He doesn’t know if he ever will again. Everything seems impossible, even simple tasks like eating or showering. All he wants is to pitch a tent in the middle of a forest and live out the rest of his days there.

 _…It sounds stupid when he says it out loud_.

A stupid idea for a stupid man. At least all the pieces of _this_ puzzle fit.

(Not that that was much of a consolation.)

But, to his credit, he ends up at Bruce’s, which is probably a less stupid idea. Although he’s probably going to want to talk about Natasha and Clint not only doesn’t want to, but can’t think of anyone he wants to talk about this with _less_.

Because Bruce knows what it looks like when someone cares about Natasha the way he does. Bruce has lived that. And Clint does not want to be seen through.

Still, it beats hitching a ride to New Asgard and having to get chummy with a bunch of superpowered deities he’s never met before.

“Clint? What are you doing here?”

“I…I needed somewhere to think. I’m just…I’m…” And he _really_ doesn’t want to cry in front of his friend, but it’s starting to look almost certain that he will.

Luckily, Bruce seems to understand and doesn’t probe any further, simply saying, “Yeah, I know. Me too. Come on in.”

Without even being consciously aware of himself, Clint steps up to Bruce and wraps his arms around as much of him as he can in a hug. He feels a soft pat on his back as Bruce awkwardly reciprocates, and that’s what breaks him.

“I miss her” he chokes out through a wave of tears. “I miss them both so much.”

“I know,” Bruce replies, his voice almost comically quiet. “So do I.”

* * *

 

He calls Wanda the next day, probably way too early.

“You were right.”

“About what?” Her voice, rather than being bleary with tiredness, is crisp and clear. Clint wonders if she’s slept. Concern flickers across the part of his brain that processes emotions, and it’s nice to know that he still has the emotional bandwidth to care about something other than his own pain.

“About Natasha.” He can almost _hear_ the grimace-smile he’s sure must be on her face.

“Finally realized, didn’t you.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it now. There’s nothing _to_ do. I just—”

“Needed to talk to someone. I understand. I know what it’s like to have someone you love die in front of you. Honestly, I’m glad you called me. I think we could both use this.”

“I’m so sorry for what happened to you. To him. None of it’s fair.”

“No. It’s not. But we have to keep trying.”

“How? What’s the point?”

“They would want us to.”

And he can’t really argue with that. (Not that he has the energy to argue with anyone.) But her being right doesn’t make it any easier.

“Do you still carry that picture around?”

“Do you still carry the file?”

“You know I do.”

“Then you have your answer.”

“How did that even happen, anyway? The two of you?”

There is a pause on the other end of the line, the kind that only manifests when someone has crossed a line or pushed the other into uncharted conversational territory.

“Oh, shit, sorry, you don’t have to talk about that, I know this must be hard for you, I didn’t mean to bring him up like that—”

“No, it’s okay.” And this time, her hesitation is charged with fondness, rather than distress. “Looking back, I think it all started when I’d been confined to quarters after Lagos. He was always…kind to me. He understood me in a way I didn’t think anyone ever would. He saw me.”

“Yeah, I…sounds familiar.” And Clint allows himself a small smile at that. Because if he can’t smile about Natasha, he’s not going to make it through this, and he owes it to her to try. He owes it to her to make sure her sacrifice meant exactly what she intended for it to mean. That he could live.

Wanda lets out something just shy of a chuckle and says, “I think the first time I really noticed anything was on the day the air-conditioning broke…”

And as he listens to her trail on about the saga of their courtship, the evolution of her feelings, all of the specific details she remembered, Clint feels better.

It is the first time in eight weeks he hasn’t felt truly alone.


End file.
